Tag: Cyborg 009

So here we go, the finale episode and crushing climax of Cyborg 009 vs Devilman, and what a finale it is! For the most part this episode is very battle-filled including a battle bewteen 009 and Lilith, The good cyborg team vs the bad cyborg team, Devilman Vs Atun, and more – it’s like Dragonball Z levels of battling here.

I mentioned Atun, which is basically the “final boss” of this show. Created by the nefarious Dr. Adams – a Black Ghost scientist, Atun is the ultimate in demon creation – taking the power of a cybernetic body and infusing it with a demon possession – basically combining the powers of both Devilman and 009 all in one convenient package.

In the demon’s past, Atun knew of, and was a contemorary of the demon Amon (Devilman’s demon side). However, never able to prove himself stronger, Atun bore a grudge against Amon. Many years after the demons reappeared on Earth, Atun came into contact with Dr. Adams who was trying to create more and more powerful cyborgs after the failure of the Mythos line of cyborgs. With the Cyborg Daemon project, Atun could grow more powerful than before, hopefully being able to best his rival and perhaps gain even more power.

so of course Atun gets his comeuppance and all is right in the world leaving the characters to once again part ways. Looking back on the interactions between characters, I really wish they worked together a bit more since they sort of acted independently until the absolute end of the series, but there’s always hope for another season at some point, especially seeing that we are graced with not one, but two stingers for a continued story.

I haven’t really mentioned at all here the quality of the English dub, which is pretty good. considering this was a Netflix exclusive they got the likes of Johnny Yong Bosch as 009, Wendee Lee as Lilith and Spike Spencer as 002. The rest of the cast is pretty familiar, but it’s been a while since I’ve kept up with anime dub studio stuff, so some of the names are ones I’m not super familiar with. As many of you know I actually don’t mind subs or dubs in many situations, but prefer dubs if I have a choice since I sometimes like to multitask while I watch movies and TV. This isn’t like the best of the best or anything, but it’s good and sounds good.

Akira Fudo/Devilman: Bryce Papenbrook

Joe Shimamura/009: Johnny Yong Bosch

Ivan Whisky/001: Christine Marie Cabanos

Jet Link/002: Spike Spencer

Francoise Arnoul/003: Stephanie Sheh

Albert Heinrich/004: Michael Sinterniklaas

Geronimo Junior/005: Keith Silverstein

Chang Changku/006: Joe Ochman

Great Britain/007: Tony Azzolino

Pyunma/008: Steve Staley

Dr. Isaac Gilmore: Dave Mallow

Miki Makimura: Cristina Valenzuela

Ryo Asuka: Chris Smith

Edward/0014: Kyle McCarley

Eva/0015: Lindsay Torrance

Abel/0017: Dorothy Elias-Fahn

Seth/0018: Griffin Burns

Dr. Adams: Michael McConnohie

Lilith: Wendee Lee

Apollo: Doug Erholtz

Helena: Christine Marie Cabanos

Jinmen: Jamieson Price

Sacchan: Erin Fitzgerald

So was it perfect? always coherent? a masterpiece? the answer to all three of these are a resounding no, but it is VERY fun, entertaining, and exciting enough to spend a few hours with on Netflix especially if you just finished Devilman Crybaby and want to quench your thirst for that character yet again. I’m happy that both franchises are represented so well, seen as equal and complimenting each other – and I’m glad this lead to even more anime in BOTH franchises.

Netflix has again and again proven itself to be one of my more favorite anime licencors as of late due to their risk-taking and choice of shows that would have been deemed a stupid idea to bring over in the past. Funding all sorts of cult-classic stuff like Devilman and Cyborg 009 and somehow making them very popular franchises after years of being dormant shows it’s power in the TV industry. Now I really wish they’d get behind some other classic stuff like Harlock or Gundam, that would be awesome!

While the last episode of this three part OVA basically introduced us to the characters of both the Devilman and Cyborg 009 franchises, eventually pushing the two groups into battle, this episode is a sort of “breather” that steps back and introduces the villains of the adventure as well as setting a plausible way for everyone to eventually team up. When we last left our various groups of heroes, both Team Devilman and Team Cyborg mistook each other for their opposing groups (Demons or the Black Ghost organization). A fierce battle was had, and both characters got beat up pretty bad – Devilman getting what would normally be a mortal wound on his arm, and 009 having to jettison his arm because it nearly blew him up after a fierce attack.

So, technically the duel between 009 and Devilman ends in stalemate since both of them lost consciousness. Ryo swoops in to grab Akira’s body and bring him home, while 009 and 003 are rescued by the cyborg airship. Back in his home, Ryo searches information about Black Ghost organization after 003 previously asked whether Ryo and Akira are affiliated to Black Ghost. Meanwhile, 002, 004, and 008 stumble into the den of a new group of Black Ghost operatives – new cyborgs two generations newer than the original 00 series cyborgs – an evil plan involving cyborg demon/hybrids is unveiled and the scene is set for the thrilling climax.

Another major villain appears in this episode from the world of Devilman, but she is actually an entirely new creation made for this OVA – Lilith. When we first saw her, she was devouring a bunch of high school delinquents, now she appears in her full snakey-flower form. Her main ability seems to be something similar to that of a siren from Greek Mythology – she can use hallucinogenic pollen to alter reality around people making them see things that make them happy. Since most of the cyborgs suffered losses of major loved ones prior to being experimented on by Black Ghost, most of them were put face to face with former lovers, parents, and even children.

Lilith is such a cool character because she seems to basically be very much in-line with something Go Nagai would have created for Devilman. Apparently the people involved with this production went to great lengths to use characters inspired by other Nagai and Ishinomori works as Easter eggs for fans. I enjoy this a lot as it reminds me of how many works related to Leiji Matsumoto are handled today – while he usually gets top billing, other directors are usually adapting much older works and flesh them out using his art style to mimic the way he did things.

As I stated before, the animation in this is really good, albeit not too flashy. It preserves both of the art styles of the two franchises without creating a bizarre rift like some of these crossovers often do – imagine Family Guy and Simpsons meeting for example. Perhaps my only issue for this is the pacing as it rushes its way through the plot like many cross-overs do.

Characters are often seen doing incredibly convenient things like finding out the entire history of a clandestine scientific weapons manufacturer on the internet on order to plot along. Granted, going to much into the whys and hows of how this all fits together would be a waste of time and annoying, so leaving this sort of “fluffy” retains the special nature of this series.

What I really wish we had available in the US is the manga and light novels that were also produced for this, because they apparently flesh things out a bit and add to the story in the very same way that I would enjoy. Maybe I need to start searching fan translation sites if those are still a thing…

All-in-all another solid and fun episode, all leading up to what is shaping up to be an awesome final battle.

Around the time I had just started college, I fell in love with an anime on Toonami Midnight Run called Cyborg 009. At the time, I was oblivious to the age of the property or that it was held in the same regard in japan as something like The X-men, but I loved it. It had a great soundtrack, awesome retro art-style, and felt different than most anime on at the time. Then, Sony refused to do anything with the licence, released a single DVD and that was that – I never got to finish the show. It was not until 2015 when Netflix randomly tossed this cross-over anime onto it’s streaming service that I saw some new content with the characters. And as a bonus, I got Devilman, which at the time I had only ever seen the older film, so that was a bonus!

I know cross-over stuff like this is usually silly, and makes almost no sense most of the time, as a huge fanboy I absolutely love it. Even when Star Trek crosses over with stuff like Transformers or Planet of the Apes, I’m 100% on-board. Apparently, this cross-over is not as random as some might believe as before Go Nagai became the author of Devilman, he worked as an assistant to Shotaro Ishinomori, drawing backgrounds for the Cyborg 009 manga. It was reported in Sankei Sports that he wished to do a collaboration with Ishinomori. Sadly, Ishinomori has long since died, but this crossover lives on.

Our story here starts on some sort of active volcano with a ancient Greece theme, Cyborg 009 and his comrades are battling the Mythos Cyborgs which appears to be ripping the whole area apart Frieza Vs Goku style. Now that I’ve seen this short snippet of the battle with Apollyon, I really want to see these guys in action more. I’m aware they are crazy cyborgs that believe that their mission is to destroy Earth so they may end war and rebuild the world with themselves as the ruling Gods, but I’ve never seen those episodes, so this was awesome.

Simultaneously in Japan, Devilman kills Jinmen after he eats Akira’s longtime childhood friend Sachiko. This scene is terrifying and honestly the best version of the battle with Jinmen I’ve seen. The art is this stark black and white style with only red peering through the monochrome field similar to how a manga page would look. This was gorgeous and I honestly wish there were more scenes like this.

Next thing you know, Demons start popping up everywhere which draws the characters from both franchises together in order to fight the shared threat. well let me back up in this episode they are very much fighting each-other since they see the other as a demon that needs to be vanquished. For the brief time we see 009 and Devilman actually fight, we are shown that they are fairly evenly maatched with Devilman getting the slight edge.

Wile this episode basically just sets everything up, you really do get a sense of where the show is going and how plausibly both universes fit together.

I mentioned a bit tat I enjoyed the art direction behind the short Devilman segment at the beginning of the show; this extends to just about everything else as well. In particular, I love the look of the cyborgs in this show, as many modern interpretations seem to be obsessed with downplaying the art style of a few of the characters. Granted Pyunma, or Cyborg 008, is basically a racist architecture of a black man in his earliest versions, changing the rest of the characters to look “more modern” is always annoying to me. I especially like that both Chang Changku (006) and Jet Link (002) have the zany body proportions that they should have like Jet’s huge nose and crazy hair.

Great start to this show, here’s hoping this momentum can be kept up for the next episodes. Watching this also makes me want to look over what Cyborg 009 stuff I can find and have a marathon.

For me, one of the most overlooked and underappreciated anime / manga franchises out there (at least in America) is the venerable Cyborg 009 series by the late Shotaro Ishinomori. Created in 1963, Cyborg 009 could be considered Japan’s first superhero property, and one of, if not, the first fully racially integrated superhero team stories out there. There have been countless comics, movies and TV shows made for the franchise, this being the most recent. It should be no surprise to my readers that I really like older anime and things that have interesting art styles, and I find Ishinomori’s versions of the classic 60’s manga style to be at least up there with Tezuka.

Sadly, I recall the art style of the 2001-2 show (that aired on Cartoon Network) to be a dividing force in anime fandom at the time, with some of the more “mainstream” fans disliking it “because it looked old”. Thankfully 2017 is an entirely different beast, and while this show has had a modern facelift, anime fans seem to be more willing to try different things today which is great! Don’t be surprised if I do more Cyborg 009 reviews soon, as the 50th anniversary has brought a handful of new shows, films, and comics to enjoy.

The main story of Cyborg 009 involves a shady militarized weapons manufacturer and terrorist organization called Black Ghost, and their newest project – cyborg super soldiers. Nine people from around the world are kidnapped and forced to undergo experiments which turn them into cyborgs with superhuman powers. Realizing that they have been wronged, and that Black Ghost is a threat to humanity itself, the cyborgs band together in order to stop Black Ghost in its’ goal of starting the next world war.

This story picks up years after Black Ghost has been eliminated, and the Cyborgs are trying to live as close to normal lives as they can, only to have that ripped away from a new threat – Metahumans with abilities like their own that have seemingly been ordered to kill the Cyborgs. Called “The Blessed” these guys are all sorts of zany bad guys such as a Cowboy that can control the weather, and a man that can alter gravity at will.

Cyborg 009 – Call of Justice is a “Netflix original” that was originally released as three films in Japan. It was produced by Production I.G and OLM Digital and distributed by Toho with Kenji Kamiyama (he directed Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex ) as executive producer and chief of the project, and Kokai Kakimoto (Psycho-Pass movie unit director) as director of the films themselves. Netflix basically took this footage and edited it into a twelve episode series that premiered last month (Feb 2017).

I mentioned earlier that there was a “facelift” of sorts for the animation and character designs, and for once this is a modernization that isn’t terrible. The Cyborgs in Cyborg 009 have always had iconic red costumes adorned with yellow buttons and long yellow scarves. This motif is intact, but the suits have been “upgraded” to armored protective suits with yellow vent ports in the place of buttons. oh yeah, the yellow scarves are there! It’s subtle, but it’s a welcome upgrade for the long running series. Another change is that the character designs have been tweaked a bit, even from the 2012 film 009 Re:Cyborg, also from production I.G.

While this may be the farthest departure from the classic art style by Shotaro Ishinomori, the character designs are good, in honestly my only quibble is that every iteration seems to make Jet Link (Cyborg 002) look less and less stylized that his original design. Jet used to have crazy spike hair and a huge hooked nose, now he just has a big nose and shaggy blond hair as if played by a young Owen Wilson. This isn’t a deal breaker, but I wish classic character designs wouldn’t be hidden sometimes – this was also an issue for me with the recent Harlock CGI film. The flipside to that sentiment is that thankfully, Cyborg 008 – an African man named Pyunma, has been toned down as to not look like any sort of blackface character as he previously was depicted. Granted, this hasn’t been an issue since the 70’s or so, but seeing the original 1960’s version of this shows Aquaman is pretty uncomfortable at times.

You may have noticed that this show uses 3D CGI graphics to render characters rather than a traditional style that mimics old-school cel art. Japan has caught a lot of flack for years in the way that they handle this sort of animation as it seems somehow “cheaper” than American and even European counterparts. This sadly isn’t an actual technical limitation, but a misguided stylistic choice. The following is an excerpt from an Anime News Network column on the issue that may shed some light:

Part of the problem is that not only are CG artists trying to imitate the look of 2D animation, but they’re trying to imitate an aesthetic that was born out of cost-cutting. If anime had always been lavishly funded, it might have consistently been animated on 1’s or 2’s (that is, 24 or 12 frames per second, or a cel every 1 or 2 film frames). But it’s usually far less. To try and match that, CG artists have started rendering at lower frame rates — 6 or even 4 frames per second.

This style is jarring to western fans used to things like CGI animated films from Disney, Dreamworks, or Pixar. Hell there are even crappy children’s shows that look infinitely better than a lot of CGI anime – a recent whipping boy for this is 2016’s Berserk TV series – check out the bloodbath that unfolded after that show premiered to see how passionate fans are about this issue.

So where does Cyborg 009 – Call of Justice fall into this picture? Well, thankfully it looks pretty good – it’s by no means the best I’ve seen, but the animators made some cool choices that show a lot of depth and show off action very well. There are a few janky scenes here or there, but for the most part the animation seemed on par with shows like Cartoon Network’s recent Green Lantern series or Disney’s Tron show. It seems that Japan is finally drifting away from the fake low framerate effect on their shows, now they just have to work out stiffness a bit more, and we’ll really start to see the style come into it’s own.

I did forget to mention earlier, but I watched this anime in English on Netflix, so we have an anime dub in play. This one was produced by California-based Bang Zoom! Entertainment who used to always do dubs for Manga Entertainment releases. They are usually a solid studio with this production being no exception. I haven’t followed a lot of today’s voice actors very much, but everyone involved seemed to do a great job, and there wasn’t anyone in the cast that grated on my nerves.

All-in-all I really enjoyed this show, and hope more people check it out. Thankfully, it exists as an entry point into the franchise and really doesn’t require any knowledge of a 50+ year old back-story, but it also doesn’t alienate long-term fans. Perhaps the plot is a bit “too safe” to be anything immediately classic, but it’s a fitting chapter in a long story. If you think this looks cool, or want to see what is basically “Japanese X-Men” I’d give this show a shot!

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